| Salt Lake City |
 |
 |
| GER |
12 |
16 |
7 |
35 |
 |
| USA |
10 |
13 |
11 |
34 |
|
| NOR |
11 |
7 |
6 |
24 |
|
| CAN |
6 |
3 |
8 |
17 |
|
| RUS |
6 |
6 |
4 |
16 |
|
| AUT |
2 |
4 |
10 |
16 |
|
| ITA |
4 |
4 |
4 |
12 |
|
| FRA |
4 |
5 |
2 |
11 |
|
| SUI |
3 |
2 |
6 |
11 |
|
| NED |
3 |
5 |
0 |
8 |
|
|
|
|
Protests net just 5 arrests
By Brady Snyder and Derek Jensen
Deseret News staff writers
With all the hoopla preceding the 2002 Winter Games over the havoc protesters might wreak on Salt Lake City, the payoff has been anything but engrossing.
Rowdy ruckus raisers have been missing in action and in their substitute nice, polite demonstrators have graced Salt Lake's streets.
Even Salt Lake City's "protest zones" — fenced areas where legal protesting can occur — have received few complaints from normally free roaming demonstrators.
According to the city administration, the protests, conducted so far by 17 groups, have netted a grand total of five arrests and all those were on the first day when a few protesters, championing the plight of homeless people, demanded to be taken to jail.
Another protest last week, billed as having the potential to be a huge security risk, drew less than a dozen demonstrators and those that did show were out numbered by police and media.
"We were trying to plan for the very worst but I think what we've seen is peaceful, lawful demonstrators getting out their point of view," said Joshua Ewing, spokesman for Mayor Rocky Anderson.
Wednesday the Citizen Activist Network held a rain-soaked protest billed as the "last chance" to protest the Olympics. Despite rain and hail about a dozen protesters gathered outside Salt Lake Olympic Square for yet another peaceful demonstration.
"The cops have been like, totally, amazingly laid back," said CAN's Amy Hines. "We were expecting an overreaction and what we got was just police stopping by. . . . We weren't harassed or anything."
CAN is one of the few groups actually protesting the Olympics, which the network feels is overly commercial and usurps government funds from more needed social programs.
Other protest groups, including one called Hillbilly Voodoo, claim to love the Winter Games and are simply using the world stage to get out their message.
Police say they are surprised at how uneventful Games protest have been.
Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Kevin Youngberg, who works in the Olympic Crowd Management Center, which coordinates intelligence and police response to Games protests, credits part of the quiet atmosphere to excellent intelligence gathering by police. Information of protest plans usually comes into the Crowd Management Center two days early, and police send extra personnel, including specially trained Public Order Units, to be ready to respond.
Despite the relative peace of protesters so far, Youngberg said police aren't resting easy yet.
"You know what, it's not over," Youngberg said. "The morning of the 25th we can say it's over."
E-MAIL: bsnyder@desnews.com
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February 21, 2002
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